


The World is Quiet Here

by SociopathicArchangel



Series: i didn't realize this was a sad occasion [3]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Brothers AU, Gen, KEVIN PALMER UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE, canon butchery yeeeaaaaa, no idea how this became a series, not-so-subtle references, say it with me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 15:23:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10415154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SociopathicArchangel/pseuds/SociopathicArchangel
Summary: There is something sickly about witnessing the aftermath of a disaster and feeling the shockwave of it, and knowing that you are responsible for it.





	

He hopes Kevin still has the fucking signal jammer.

There is something sickly about witnessing the aftermath of a disaster and feeling the shockwave of it – the blood on the sand, the debris on the roads, the hands that stick out from under the crumbled concrete, the smoke, the fire, the screaming, the ash in your lungs and the shards embedded on your chest from the blast – and knowing that you are responsible for it.

Cecil signs off, moves away from his microphone and cries.

* * *

 

Time is not real. It is a human construct, and even then, not a very effective one.

It is not linear, it is unmeasurable, it is intangible, it is a fiction. And yet at the same time, it is not all of these things. Time is fluid and time is malleable and time is – crucial. Precious. So very, very fragile.

Cecil thinks, _Did I do the right thing?_

He thinks, _What if I didn’t._

He thinks, _What could have happened if I told him the truth?_

He thinks, _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry._

He thinks of mirrors and lights and someone warning him and screaming and his mother and his sister and a brother and _Good Night Cecil_ and he takes hours before he finally picks himself up from the floor of the recording booth, cheeks tear-stained.

Even then, he dithers in the breakroom, swirling a coffee that’s long turned solid and is faintly glowing green at the edges and starting to hum. The notes suspiciously sound like the opening of the Bohemian Rhapsody.

He sets the coffee down on the table and sits on the floor instead, too tired to go grab a chair.

There’s nobody in the station anymore – except maybe for Station Management. It’s not uncommon for him to stay in late, of course. Sometimes he takes care of Khoshekh and doesn’t always mind the light outside. Sometimes he has to…settle some things with the management. Sometimes he has to finish his editorials.

Tonight, he’s just tired. Lethargic. Guilty.

_Mama….just killed a man._

The hardened coffee is singing now. The mug has been engulfed in a sickly green glow and is levitating off the table. It’s starting to spin.

_Put a gun against his head. Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead._

Cecil wants to laugh. Firstly because, of all the hymns in Night Vale, the Rhapsody never gets old, and somehow Dark Owl records never goes out of stock of Best of Queen tapes. Or vinyls. Or CDs. Anything that’s Queen really. But that’s mostly because Michelle sometimes forgets to take new shipment out of the stockroom after it’s been delivered, as a few minutes after it arrives, she decides it’s so yesterday and that she’s so over Queen. She leaves it in the stockroom, and anything that’s left in the stockroom for more than a fortnight turns into Queen, so.

Secondly, Cecil might very much have killed a man too. He didn’t have a gun. He just had his words. The Voice of Night Vale, of course. What other weapon would he have had? Words words words. Truths and lies and the balance of an entire city put on his shoulders. And if he’s not careful, the balance of entire universes.

If he had told Kevin that Strex took over, would he have fought harder? Organized their resistance better? Was it because Cecil told him that they would win that he – and the rest of Desert Bluffs – became complacent and so they lost? Would anything that Cecil had said have made a difference?

It was because of him that Strex had known about the Night Vale resistance, it very well could have doomed the Bluffs too. He should have chosen his words better – people are never careful about their words. They always think that they are inconsequential. The universe rests precariously on the edges of words. Words too sharp and too soft and too wrong and Cecil knows this too well and – he wipes the edges of his eyes.

He’s overthinking. He’s never any good when overthinking.

_Words are all I have so write them, ‘cause you’ll need them just to get by._

The mug is upside-down now. It’s still spinning. Cecil watches it idly. It’s singing one of the less common hymns. An old one.

_…falling apart to half time._

Cecil holds back a sob.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, “I’m sorry.”

When he closes his eyes, he hears the sounds of his own voice, younger, crying, and somebody swearing, voice thrumming with power that Cecil’s only ever heard coming from his lips: _“Look at me I will make you listen I will never let you have Night Vale and I will never let you have my brother.”_

* * *

 

“I want to save him,” Cecil says. Carlos stills from his tinkering on the table to look up. Cecil is at the doorway of the extra bedroom that Carlos has fashioned into a home lab.

“Kevin?” Carlos asks.

Cecil nods. Takes in a breath and sighs. Runs his hands over his face. “I don’t know what to do.”

Carlos looks back at the device in his hands and then back to Cecil. He gently puts down the solder and the metal contraption that doesn’t have a name yet. “What do you need?”

“I need to know if this is going to work out,” Cecil says. “I…I heard him. Carlos, I heard him. He said it was desolate. He said he hasn’t talked to me in a long time.”

“Oh, Ceec.” Carlos smiles softly at him as he gets up and crosses over to Cecil, who doesn’t wait for him to get there and hugs him halfway, burying his face in the crook of Carlos’ neck. “Shh,” Carlos soothes, gently rubbing circles into Cecil’s back. “It’s okay, Cecil. It’s okay.”

“It’s my fault.”

Carlos doesn’t say anything, because he knows – he knows it could very well be, and knows it very well couldn’t be, and he knows that perhaps there was nothing Cecil could have done to change it, and Desert Bluffs might have been doomed from the start.

“Time doesn’t work in Night Vale, Cecil,” Carlos says, “Time doesn’t work at all. It’s a construct of human perception, yes? An illusion created by the smallness of our consciousness; an effort to bring together paradox space and all its complexities down to human scale, down to something we can hope to understand, even though for all our efforts, we really can’t do anything about them.”

Cecil stills in his arms.

“You can save him if you want to, Ceec,” Carlos says, “I’ll help you. Anything you need. Anything at all.”

Cecil nods and sniffs, letting out a shaky breath.

“Okay,” he says, “Okay.”

* * *

 

_(“Do you have a brother?”)_


End file.
